New research to be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2016 Meeting suggests a key to easing the opioid withdrawal symptoms of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) is to ensure parents can spend plenty of time ...

Standardizing hospital care policies across institutions for infants diagnosed with drug withdrawal symptoms at birth reduces their length of treatment and hospitalization, according to new collaborative research led by Vermont ...

Among adults motivated to quit smoking, 12 weeks of treatment with a nicotine patch, the drug varenicline, or combination nicotine replacement therapy produced no significant differences in confirmed rates of smoking abstinence ...

The increase in use of prescribed opioids among women during pregnancy has probably contributed to the rise in neonatal abstinence syndrome, argues Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National ...

A study of two opioids used to wean babies born in withdrawal from drugs their mothers have taken shows that buprenorphine is superior to methadone in reducing duration of treatment and length of hospital stay.

Computer-based modeling is helping to further reduce length of hospital stay and duration of treatment with opioids that are used therapeutically to wean babies born in withdrawal from drugs their mothers have taken. This ...

Infants diagnosed with drug withdrawal symptoms at birth, also known as neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), are nearly two and a half times as likely to be readmitted to the hospital in the first month after being discharged ...

Stimulant drug abuse has long-term effects on brain volume in women, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. Brain structures involved in reward, learning and executive control showed vast changes ...

Abstinence

Abstinence is a voluntary restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. Most frequently, the term refers to sexual abstinence, or abstention from alcohol or food. The practice can arise from religious prohibitions or practical considerations. Abstinence may also refer to drugs. For example you can abstain from smoking. Abstinence has diverse forms. Commonly it refers to a temporary or partial abstinence from food, as in fasting. In the twelve-step program of Overeaters Anonymous abstinence is the term for refraining from compulsive eating, akin in meaning to sobriety for alcoholics. Because the regimen is intended to be a conscious act, freely chosen to enhance life, abstinence is sometimes distinguished from the psychological mechanism of repression. The latter is an unconscious state, having unhealthy consequences. Freud termed the channeling of sexual energies into other more culturally or socially acceptable activities, "sublimation".